Determining Optimal Soil Loosening Depth for Root Growth

oh good okay that's all right it's got a little clay in it you can see a little sand it's probably not quite totally mixed up yet but that's fine so in this area where we're going to be working if we take a real close look at the conditions we've got wood we've got rocks we've got hard packed ground this is just not suitable to grow a lawn and we need to loosen this soil up but i want to caution you because when you're going through the process of loosening up the soil more is not necessarily better and let me explain to you exactly what i mean you want to just loosen up enough ground that will allow the roots of the new grass to penetrate you don't need to dig and loosen up this much dirt at a time and the reason i caution you against that is simple if you loosen up this much dirt it eventually will settle back down and when you well hi little one when you when you and thanks for going in the swamp when you have that okay go away sorry guys when you have that much dirt loosened up it's going to settle back down and that means that the top isn't going to stay true flat and level it's going to undulate it's going to settle unevenly so the deeper you go the more pronounced the settling is going to be down the road you really only need to go approximately six inches to loosen it up to get good root penetration if you want to extend it to eight inches go ahead but we don't need to go 18 inches we don't need to go two feet we're not planting crops we're planting grass so if you've got your subsoil here you don't want to just put four inches of black dirt on top of it this hard pack subsoil is not going to allow the roots to penetrate and the 4 inches of black dirt that you're putting over the top isn't enough of a moisture barrier to retain the longev the life of the seed if you have a sprinkler that you'd forget to put out or your sprinkler system fails for a day or two and the sun comes out and bakes it it can cook your lawn really fast so what i'm going to recommend you do is you take that same black dirt that you were thinking about just laying over the top like a sandwich and this is where you fold it into the subsoil together and that's what you're gonna see me do next i'm gonna use a big rake and i'm gonna loosen up the subsoil and after i get the subsoil loose to the depth that i feel comfortable with at approximately six inches i'm then going to start to fold the black dirt into the upper layer but i'm going to work it down into the lower layers of the…